Aerial robots swarm the stage at TED [video]

These robots can swarm, make maps, and get young people excited about science.

Long Beach, California—Vijay Kumar's videos have already been a hit on YouTube, as people have been fascinated to watch swarms of robotic quadrotors perform various feats, like flying through narrow windows and coasting across a room in formation. But Kumar still had a few tricks up his sleeve when he took the stage at TED, and he seized the opportunity to show some serious ways in which aerial robots will change our world.

Some could say that aerial robots are already making a huge impact, primarily in military applications where (very) remote humans often pilot drones in hostile territories.

Kumar, however, envisions aerial robots that can fly themselves and carry out their tasks, on their own, or with minimal human input beyond initial design and programming. His drones offload even more of the job of stabilizing their flight to computers that aren't even on-board the copter (a weight and complexity advantage). Once airborne, the entire flight is computer-controlled.

The copters themselves are very stripped down. In most of the versions shown so far, they simply carry a sensor that lets them know where they are and how they are oriented in space, and remote-controlled hardware for adjusting their four rotors. All the heavy lifting—figuring out where to go and how to maintain a stable flight around obstacles—is done by computers that communicate with them wirelessly.

Kumar's TED presentation.

That's enough to get the robots to do things like right themselves when thrown, but Kumar's team has recently added a higher level of control that lets the robots swarm. In this case, there are added rules that are a bit like the ones that appear to govern bird flocks and fish schools—stay a fixed distance from your neighbors, split from the one on the left under a specific set of conditions, etc. This level of control enabled a swarm of robots to execute a hypnotic figure-eight without any collisions. More practically, Kumar showed teams of robots lifting items that an individual copter couldn't handle, and a swarm constructing a simple structure from parts left sitting on a nearby table.

But the ultimate goal of this work only became obvious when Kumar showed how he had built a quadrotor that carried a stripped-down version of Microsoft's Kinect hardware. Instead of being limited to a carefully controlled environment, these robots could enter an unknown building and gradually map their surroundings. Feedback from the control computer would have the robot move and orient itself to fill in blank spaces on the map, maneuvering into new rooms and heading through the structure vertically as needed.

The utility of something like this—mapping a potentially hazardous environment without risking a human (or even very expensive hardware) was pretty obvious, even if Kumar didn't spend time on it. He didn't even mention the other obvious step, which was having a swarm of these robots cooperate to map a building that much faster.

The talk wrapped up with Kumar suggesting that the robots could help lure kids into science/technology careers, and showed off a swarm of quadrotors playing the James Bond theme on a set of instruments that looked like they were borrowed from the latest OK Go video. It was a fun touch (and great that he brought the grad students who programmed it out on stage). But I'd suspect that kids would be just as excited about the demo of the robot mapping the building, and it's one that has a lot more in the way of potential applications.

You are all fools. This marks the early days of Skynet. (Actually, since this stuff is out in the open - and not in some soopersekrit lab funded by soopersekrit government programs - the potential is available for all, not just the .mil.)

Not to toot my own horn, but this:

Quote:

His drones offload even more of the job of stabilizing their flight to computers that aren't even on-board the copter (a weight and complexity advantage). Once airborne, the entire flight is computer-controlled.

is an idea I cooked up in a high school short story. Of course, it was a total ripoff of Zerg Overlords..

This seems like it'd be ideal for a Fukushima situation. Sending in dozens of totally disposable quadrocopters would be a great way to survey what's going on in a place that is lethal to humans. Plus, once they figure out the layout of the place it seems like it would be easy to just send one in on a pre-defined route every half-hour to monitor changing conditions.

How about instead of having fixed dashboard cameras in police cars, you just have 3 of these that launch themselves into the air every time an officer pulls someone over? They can then hover in a circle around the scene from multiple angles, and they can be called back to the car when the stop is over. Hell, they could probably even be set to follow someone if they took off by foot.

One thing never mentioned is battery life. How long do they last on a charge? How long is a charge? How far aware can they safely wander from their base station? Would it be viable to add a solar trickle charger to allow them to wander far afield, shut down for a few hours during the day, and then pick back up?

This seems like it'd be ideal for a Fukushima situation. Sending in dozens of totally disposable quadrocopters would be a great way to survey what's going on in a place that is lethal to humans. Plus, once they figure out the layout of the place it seems like it would be easy to just send one in on a pre-defined route every half-hour to monitor changing conditions.

Weren't they trying to send in drones? I seem to recall they had a problem with that since the radiation was interfering with radio signals.

This seems like it'd be ideal for a Fukushima situation. Sending in dozens of totally disposable quadrocopters would be a great way to survey what's going on in a place that is lethal to humans. Plus, once they figure out the layout of the place it seems like it would be easy to just send one in on a pre-defined route every half-hour to monitor changing conditions.

Weren't they trying to send in drones? I seem to recall they had a problem with that since the radiation was interfering with radio signals.

Also, the music at the end is entirely appropriate.

I don't think they were sending in autonomous drones. As long as the conditions don't interfere with the flight control systems and a laser scanner it seems like these could be sent in by the dozen and offload their data once back outside.

One thing never mentioned is battery life. How long do they last on a charge? How long is a charge? How far aware can they safely wander from their base station? Would it be viable to add a solar trickle charger to allow them to wander far afield, shut down for a few hours during the day, and then pick back up?

Either way, too cool.

All of the above are simple to adapt variables. Battery life is mainly constrained by costs, because you can always scale up designs to carry more battery capacity, and scaling up always hits a point where costs start rising exponentially. They can wander as far as their radio systems can reach, which is more of a political/legal issue of frequency spectrum usage than a technological one.

Can they use solar charge pumps to recharge themselves? Sure. "Viable" is only a question of how long you are willing to wait for sufficient charge to develop. The technology to do solar trickle recharging is nothing new. (Admittedly, there is room for some ultra-cool solution where the drone expands a a solor collector (maybe flexible solar?) upon landing and contracts it for aerodynamics before liftoff)

This seems like it'd be ideal for a Fukushima situation. Sending in dozens of totally disposable quadrocopters would be a great way to survey what's going on in a place that is lethal to humans. Plus, once they figure out the layout of the place it seems like it would be easy to just send one in on a pre-defined route every half-hour to monitor changing conditions.

Sending in a multitude of drones to attack a target - having self-destruct mechanisms and directed explosives.

Come on you aren't thinking broad enough for the military applications or the self-aware aspects that may ensue.

This seems like it'd be ideal for a Fukushima situation. Sending in dozens of totally disposable quadrocopters would be a great way to survey what's going on in a place that is lethal to humans. Plus, once they figure out the layout of the place it seems like it would be easy to just send one in on a pre-defined route every half-hour to monitor changing conditions.

Not if PETAr gets it's way. (People for the Ethical Treatment of Autonomous robots)

One thing never mentioned is battery life. How long do they last on a charge? How long is a charge? How far aware can they safely wander from their base station? Would it be viable to add a solar trickle charger to allow them to wander far afield, shut down for a few hours during the day, and then pick back up?

Either way, too cool.

If you're using the swarm approach, you could have a certain percentage of them continuously rotate out of the swarm, find an appropriate parking spot, and recharge themselves while fresh robots fly in to replace them. Since they would be flying over already-mapped terrain they could move faster than the mapping swarm so they wouldn't have to expend a substantial portion of their charge just to get back into the swarm.

One thing never mentioned is battery life. How long do they last on a charge? How long is a charge? How far aware can they safely wander from their base station? Would it be viable to add a solar trickle charger to allow them to wander far afield, shut down for a few hours during the day, and then pick back up?

Either way, too cool.

If you're using the swarm approach, you could have a certain percentage of them continuously rotate out of the swarm, find an appropriate parking spot, and recharge themselves while fresh robots fly in to replace them. Since they would be flying over already-mapped terrain they could move faster than the mapping swarm so they wouldn't have to expend a substantial portion of their charge just to get back into the swarm.

You could also have a group of them ferrying fresh batteries to remote charging stations in order to extend the swarm's range.

One thing never mentioned is battery life. How long do they last on a charge? How long is a charge? How far aware can they safely wander from their base station? Would it be viable to add a solar trickle charger to allow them to wander far afield, shut down for a few hours during the day, and then pick back up?

Either way, too cool.

If you're using the swarm approach, you could have a certain percentage of them continuously rotate out of the swarm, find an appropriate parking spot, and recharge themselves while fresh robots fly in to replace them. Since they would be flying over already-mapped terrain they could move faster than the mapping swarm so they wouldn't have to expend a substantial portion of their charge just to get back into the swarm.

You could also have a group of them ferrying fresh batteries to remote charging stations in order to extend the swarm's range.

You could also have a group of them ferrying fresh batteries to remote charging stations in order to extend the swarm's range.

Heh, a bucket brigade of batteries.

I had not thought of that, but it would work.

Start tossing in some "Heavy Lift" quadroters to move in charging stations or carry in power/data cords, and the potential for mapping huge spaces is limitless. Plus, once you have a spatial map, you can start moving in Quadroters with specialized hardware (such as FLIR cameras or geiger counters) for specialized work.

Imagine what a fire&rescue department could do with a fleet of these...

One thing never mentioned is battery life. How long do they last on a charge? How long is a charge? How far aware can they safely wander from their base station? Would it be viable to add a solar trickle charger to allow them to wander far afield, shut down for a few hours during the day, and then pick back up?

Either way, too cool.

Cell phone data link perhaps? Even 2G should be enough to get some updated path data transferred. As for charging, i think DARPA toyed with drones that would attach themselves to power cables and charge that way.

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.